Metal and hard rock reviews

Danzig – Skeletons (Evilive Recors 2015)

I’ve been a huge Danzig fan ever since I heard Static Age sometime in the early nineties. I’ve loved almost everything he’s done. A big part of my fascination has been the imagery, the skulls, demons, devils and darkness has been very appealing to me. I had huge hopes for his covers album, of which he has speaking for quite some time. A covers record is always interesting, as it gives a fan a look at the inspirations and is a nifty little way to discover new music. Metallica has introduced me to a lot of music through their covers, Danzig and Misfits among others.

But this is perhaps one of the worst covers albums I have ever heard. I hate the production, it doesn’t sound gritty, or dark for that matter, to me it just sounds half assed. I can kind of see what he is trying for, but it doesn’t work. The production ruined Death Red Saboath and it ruins Skeletons.

The first song I heard was the Black Sabbath cover, NIB, released as a teaser. I was shocked. This sounds like crap! What’s with the piss poor guitar sound? Why is layered in that way? Sounds like trying to salvage a bad guitar tone by layering it on top of another poor tone.

Danzigs voice doesn’t even sound good, for the most part. Like on the ZZ-Top song Rough Boy or Aerosmiths Lord of the Thighs he sounds like Ian Gill did singing Paranoid in his short lived Black Sabbath stint. It’s just wrong somehow.

The songs more suited to his voice in my opinion are what salvages the whole album. Crying in the Rain originally by the Everly Brothers sounds ominous and cool, so does the song Satan which I wasn’t familiar with beforehand. Action Woman is also really cool, and far surpasses the original.

A surprisingly uneven album by Evil Elvis. It will not feature in my Danzig playlist … I think … oh maybe Satan will